Electronic negotiation is of increasing importance in the digital economy. As commercial transactions over the Internet or e-commerce grows in importance and quantity, the number of electronic negotiations conducted without the direct involvement of people in the process increases. Two different fields have developed to handle these electronic negotiations: one utilizing “agent” technology and the other relying on “protocols” for conducting the negotiation. A detailed discussion of the differences between these two fields would be quite complex. However, each does have a different character. For example, an agent presumably attempts to adjust its behavior to adapt to each negotiating situation. A protocol, however, is a well-defined set of steps or rounds by which each negotiation is conducted.
A significant amount of research has been devoted towards systems utilizing agent software that can implement complex negotiations. However, none of these systems has achieved widespread acceptance. Part of the reason that these systems have not been accepted is that they must be extremely complex to support a large amount of generality. A system with agent software has not been developed which can simply and practically conduct any type of negotiation.
More common than agent systems are simple protocols. In these simple protocols, negotiating parties exchange offers and responses for a particular attribute or parameter, such as color, until agreement is reached. The parties then repeat this procedure for some other attribute, such as style. Unfortunately, these simple protocols do not allow for multiple-attribute compromise. For example, a negotiating party may be willing to accept an orange sweater only in crewneck style. Since each attribute is negotiated separately, the negotiating party cannot communicate such a compromise offer.
Some protocols overcome this problem by using a trusted third party that receives full information from each negotiating party and selects the appropriate values for the specified attributes. Inherent in this type of protocol is the requirement that each party reveal to the third party the least favorable deal that it will accept.
Another problem with using existing protocols for multi-attribute negotiation is never-ending, or non-terminating, negotiations. By not limiting negotiations to a set of attributes at the outset, the negotiating parties can repeatedly introduce new attributes. Likewise, without a set of rules that lead towards an agreement or a failed negotiation, existing protocols are not guaranteed to terminate.